Courtenay Brown

I took this video on Saturday. This is the Colorado River, near Hanging Lake, a section of rapids called "Upper Death" for reasons that are totally mysterious, right. Flow rate on Saturday was 16,700 cfs. Here is a view of that same section at 6,700 cfs.

[caption id="attachment_3330" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="March 26, 2003"][/caption] I've been cleaning things and finding things. Now it's time to go write things, about some things that are stupid, some that aren't. It's a few steps removed from a fictional teenage boy, but I still commiserate.

Spending 3.5 weeks at sea level seems to have ensured that I killed off every last one of my altitude-adapted red blood cells. Racing REV3 Quassy at the end of that sea level stint and then hustling back to altitude seems to have nailed my coffin nearly shut*, or at least ensured that I need double-digit hours of sleep each day. Ack! I'm not sure on which side of the causal story "being grumpy" belongs? Just-ish kidding! I'm not grumpy all the time! In all seriousness, I am still feeling a bit run down. Not the absolute worst - I haven't drowned, and I haven't skipped any workouts, I'm just not feeling very sparkly. So I decided to upgrade myself ...

After the race on Sunday, I drove up to New Hampshire to visit my sister. She is graduating from college this coming weekend. My aim for the trip was two-fold. First, see Sarah (Scare) at college. Second, beat my brother. Nathaniel (Than) and his girlfriend drove up to New Hampshire from Maryland to visit Scare two weeks ago. They were there from 5 p.m. to 10:15 a.m. When they got home to my mom's they regaled us with a giant slideshow, "Trip to Dartmouth". It had 150 photos! But exactly 1 of them included Dartmouth and the child who actually goes there. In it, she was looking askance at Than as he tried to fix a doorknob in her apartment. Here ...

Walking isn't really an activity in which I partake. It ranks up there with "playing games that aren't Scrabble" and "gardening" on the list of things I try not to do. Store that nugget away for a second. Now: Rev3 Quassy! I raced this past weekend. I enjoyed it. It was the hardest race I've done yet, in terms of percentage of course that was flat (I estimate it at 1.7%, which "coincidentally" is 1.2 divided by 70.3), and also in terms of the quality of competition. I can't wait for next year! It was absolutely beautiful, and I really enjoyed testing myself under difficult conditions. We had a no-wetsuit swim, I definitely would have liked the extra buoyancy but the water ...